As Greeley police scoured fields and culverts for signs of Kayleah Wilson, 60-year-old Richard Berrelez was searching too, along with a hounddog.

Alie Berrelez disappeared while playing outside her Englewood apartment.

It was one of many such searches he has made in the 17 years since his 5-year-old granddaughter Aleszandra “Alie” Berrelez was kidnapped and killed. The discovery of 12-year-old Wilson’s body in an irrigation ditch on May 19 ended the latest search.

It likely won’t be the last for Berrelez, who has made the search for lost children his mission ever since a very personal discovery turned his life upside down on May 22, 1993.

That is when Yogi, an Aurora police bloodhound discovered Alie’s body a dozen miles from his Englewood apartment in Deer Creek Canyon four days after she vanished while playing outside with her brother.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.